Submitted via IRC for Fnord666
'Into the Breach' promises more pixellated sci-fi action.
If you've played FTL: Faster Than Light, you know that it's a sublime gaming experience, well deserving of its high ratings and devoted fan base. Developer Subset Games has just launched a teaser trailer for its follow-up title, Into The Breach. FTL provided players with perfectly-balanced chaos-management activities that made building, defending and upgrading a spaceship and its crew incredibly fun. Into The Breach looks to be as enjoyable, and the gameplay on display has even more of the same retro-pixel sci-fi mayhem.
Once again, the art-style looks adorable, with an isometric viewpoint on a small gaming grid that's populated with darling little monsters and heroes. The music is by Ben Prunty, the guy that made FTL's distinctive soundtrack (which you can buy on vinyl, you hipster), so you know it's going to rock.
Source: https://www.engadget.com/2017/02/10/ftl-successor/
(Score: 2) by ledow on Sunday February 12 2017, @08:42PM
"perfectly-balanced chaos-management"
Like fuck.
It's almost impossible.
Unless you want to learn every detail, pause CONSTANTLY on every action, movement or order, and micro-manage every damn detail, and do it over and over and over again until you hit the lucky weapons and sectors and missions, to try to get to the final sectors and then win quick, it's unbelievably stupendously UNbalanced.
It's a good game. It's addictive. But you don't stand a chance of winning as an "ordinary" player with the time to dedicate to it. And so much is luck.
And there are even still things like you memorise all the keyboard controls, go to select the first weapon to shoot, something happens and you end up selecting an option you never wanted to. The developers haven't touched it in years.
I paid for it. I got my money's worth of entertainment. That's about it.
(Score: 2) by pkrasimirov on Sunday February 12 2017, @09:51PM
> "perfectly-balanced chaos-management"
>
> Like fuck.
>
> It's almost impossible.
That's chaos management.
> And so much is luck.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roguelike [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Monday February 13 2017, @02:43AM
I must agree, and I plan on avoiding rogue-like games in the future. I appreciate the risk factor of potentially losing characters, but I don't want to have to repeat the game 10 times just to beat it once. There obviously was a lot of thought put into the plotlines but looking through the FTL wiki I missed a lot of them in the 10 hours I put into it.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Monday February 13 2017, @04:46PM
Some other good games with lots of randomness (not rogue-like): Darkest Dungeon, Airships: Conquer the Skies, Rimworld
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Monday February 13 2017, @11:52AM
It depends a lot on your initial ship configuration. I think I completed it on the third or fourth attempt, but there are some of the later ships that I've never managed to finish it with. I like the game, and it was well worth the money, but there are a few things that I don't like, mostly the over-importance of the random number generator. A few of the ships can only be unlocked if you get two random events, in the right order, in a sequence, when you have the right kind of crew member or technology. These are still on my list of ships I don't have access to. Beyond that, the upgrades that you have available are only ever a small random subset of the total in the game. I played one time and got to the fourth system with only beam weapons, because nothing else was for sale. By that point, everyone had shields that are sufficiently strong that I couldn't get through them. I also don't like how aggressively bounded the story is. The final enemy is (usually) really hard (or, if you happen to have managed to find the right weapon load-out and got a cloak, really easy - random number generator again), but then, having upgraded your ship to the point when you're having fun, the game ends and you have to start again.
You do have to pause a lot, but that's what makes it a tactical game and not a reflexes game. There's time to think.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by ledow on Tuesday February 14 2017, @08:02AM
It's not a rogue-like, because it MAKES you progress, quite rapidly, with no chance of disobeying (once the fleet catch up, you are lucky to escape one or two encounters with them.
Then you make the final sector and are FORCED to take on the big guy because about 5-10 jumps later he takes the base.
I don't mind the difficulty, if you do have time to relax. In combat, you're expected to pause constantly, which just destroys the flow. But between encounters, you have little choice. Move forward or die.
I've not seen that in any other similar game, being forced to progress but at the same time each encounter has as much time as you like.
And the RNG is a heavy part of gameplay. I have started a game where - and this IS possible - I jumped to the only possible star system available on the first move. It was a random encounter event. I had no choice but to interact. The encounter took away my only crew member. Game over.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Wednesday February 15 2017, @11:14AM
And the RNG is a heavy part of gameplay. I have started a game where - and this IS possible - I jumped to the only possible star system available on the first move. It was a random encounter event. I had no choice but to interact. The encounter took away my only crew member. Game over.
I've had a similar experience - first random encounter knocks out my FTL drive and makes me fight a ship that has shields I can't puncture with the initial weapons load out. I don't mind that too much, because I haven't invested much in that run by that time, but it's really frustrating when this happens about half way through the game. You end up quitting the game, copying the savegame file (because, of course, there's no in-game save mechanism), and then restarting the game and continuing. That completely destroys immersion.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 13 2017, @05:08PM
Like fuck.
It's almost impossible.
Hardly. I finished the first game I ever played, albeit on easy mode. This isn't meant to brag as I know countless people are better than me, but the "this is like Dark Souls hard" is an exaggeration. The game is just balanced as games in the 2000s were, where "normal" is a challenge and "hard" is actually hard, not the hand-holding "normal means easy, and impossible means hard" games have evolved to.
If you figure out some basic tricks (visit as many beacons as you can and never run away from a fight, shoot all your weapons at once at a single subsystem, rather than using autofire, when boarded put all your people in the medical room and vent oxygen everywhere else, if you get overwhelmed or confused you should immediately pause the game), you will be 70% to finishing an easy run right there.
If you have time, just watching 15 minutes of a successful player play you'll get most of that right away.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday February 12 2017, @09:29PM
I don't give 2 shits about playing the game, but I've found some new coding background music in the soundtrack - It's atmospheric without using too many annoying queefy sounds Thanks!
(Score: 2) by pkrasimirov on Sunday February 12 2017, @09:49PM
FYI there are two versions of each track: one for peace time ("Explore") and one for combat ("Battle"). The latter has more percussions.
My favorite track, a bit of dubstep-ish at the end: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFkGjEut9U4&t=1h41m [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by looorg on Monday February 13 2017, @12:03AM
I played a fair amount of FTL. This new successor doesn't look very interesting by comparison. Sure it's has 8bitish-pixel-graphics and a catchy tune but beyond that this doesn't seem like anything I would get into at all. The interesting thing about FTL is that is spawned a lot of copycat games -- non as was good as FTL tho. How this will be as interesting as FTL I don't know, but I don't see it at the moment. Perhaps I'm wrong and it will be great once I try it for myself. Otherwise I guess I'll just play some more Rimworld instead -- that is always entertaining even tho it's just a graphically fancy lite version of Dwarf Fortress.
FTL provided players with perfectly-balanced chaos-management activities that made building, defending and upgrading a spaceship and its crew incredibly fun.
Did we play the same game? FTL is a game about control, risk-management and choices. Am I secure if I open this door - since monsters will come from all dark rooms that are not secure if you open a door and move towards the crystal so they can destroy it. You don't run around willy-nilly doing thing! It's not chaos. That is how you lose games. Clearly whomever wrote that sentence is shit at playing FTL. You start in the room with the crystal. From that room you slowly and methodically search each level for the exit room. All while trying to build up a good, or fair, amount of defences for the monsters that will spawn out of the darkness every time you open a new door. When you find the exit your try and secure the route from the start room to the exit room as best you can. Then you pick up the crystal which will start the monster onslaught and haul ass towards the exit. All so you can start all over again on the next level. In the meantime you try your best to get new loot and gold so you can upgrade your heroes and such hopefully making the next level a little easier. On the early levels you might try and farm the level by opening more doors then you have in hope of getting more gold and loot. At later stages when your back is up against the wall that is not as much fun if you don't really have to. But if you fail at upgrading things after a few levels you'll start to fall behind and it will become to hard for your heroes to withstand the onslaught. Also there are some heroes that make the experience much easier then others. But that might be depending largely on your play style, and some luck.
(Score: 2) by damnbunni on Monday February 13 2017, @01:44AM
I'm pretty damn sure they weren't playing the same FTL you played, since the FTL they're talking about doesn't have any crystals or monster spawns. There are monsters of a sort, but they beam onto your spaceship from their spaceship and can appear anywhere.
And there's only 'darkness' if you don't have a sensor suite installed on your ship or if you're stuck in a nebula.
Screw nebulas, man.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Monday February 13 2017, @02:03AM
Oh you are absolutely right. Egg on my face. I got it mixed up with Dungeon of the Endless. So just ignore my entire rant.
(Score: 2) by SanityCheck on Monday February 13 2017, @12:38AM
I'm waiting for Faster Than FTL!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 13 2017, @05:39AM
Geesh, talk about editorializing. I'm surprised the submitter had to dexterity to type up that summary with his holes and hands filled with the developers' cocks.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday February 13 2017, @01:40PM
(which you can buy on vinyl, you worthless hipster scum)